Bad Gays

What's your favorite Paul Verhoeven film? We knew you were going to say Showgirls–but we'll put in a word for his latest, Benedetta, with Charlotte Rampling acting up a storm and nuns diddling each other with dildos carved out of statues of the Virgin. Improbably, the film is based on a true story: and within it, and within its subject's life, there are important themes of power, gender transgression, sin, belief and deviance that are worth discussing in more detail. Today, we discuss the 16th century mystic nun, lesbian, possibly demonically possessed and possibly visionary heretic, Benedetta Carlini. Our paperback is available now! ----more---- SOURCES: Brown, Judith C. Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy. Reprint édition. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1986.   ———. “Lesbian Sexuality in Renaissance Italy: The Case of Sister Benedetta Carlini.” Signs 9, no. 4 (1984): 751–58.   Cohn, Norman. The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists o